THE SPYMASTER'S LADY by Joanna Bourne

5 Stars

"Spying is a life of boring, ordinary tasks, performed while death scratches at the window."

So perfect that it might be the last romance I ever read.

I've had this on my To Be Read list for a long time, and while I've always meant to get around to reading it I never had. Until now. At time when I'd given up ever finding another romance I wanted to really read let alone enjoy.  So, a couple of months after being on the library waitlist I finally got to read it.
Clever, deadly, and amusingly droll. Granted I have a somewhat darker sense of humor, but this definitely ticked all the boxes I could want in a historical romance. Superb plot set in Regency France and England, but not the glittering and vacuous side. This was more chess than porcelain dolls.

"I will like England." She started walking again. "I have been here only four hours, and already I have met three men trying to kill me and one who bought me whelks. For better or worse, this is not a country that ignores me."

Delightful characterizations that are broad and deep, revealed slowly. There's a charm and humor as bullets knives fly. Then, there's the shell game. Follow the secret, who's got it, and what's it worth.

"If a secret may be owned, it can change ownership," he said. 

"Oh, surely. Secrets are most promiscuous, I have eloped with a few myself, in my time."

The romance is sublime. For two individuals who understand that tomorrow is promised to no one, it is surprisingly balance with a nice bit of slow burn as the flames of attraction kindle. The humor and tete a tete between Grey and Annique are fabulous.

"Perhaps, I will try to strangle you once more. Though you have the most beautiful body imaginable. Like a large animal." 

Adrian murmured. "What complex and interesting nights you two must have." 

"Shut up," Grey said.

The expanding cast provide some comedic relief for a story that dealing with characters having been through the Reign of Terror and now living with Napoleon's ambitions. The material is serious and there is a significant body count. While, this is a romance, there is enough reality surrounding them, losses affecting them that it is critical to balance the suspense.

"You should have learned to play the piano badly, years ago. I don't know what your mother was thinking.  

"I am not musical, me." 

"Neither are the young ladies of good family. They worship at the shrine of Euterpe, butt hear her not."

But, quite simply, there's a noblesse oblige observed between the key players, even in dark times when ideals are abandoned for expediency. The romanticized version of espionage is very attractive, but romance isn't for realism it's for fantasy. Thus, all the accolades accorded this book are well deserved and I only wished I'd read it sooner. 

"Too much blood on the chessboard of the Game, and we become no better than those military savages who litter the fields of Europe with the bodies of poor young men."